The United Nations (UN) secretary general Ban Ki-moon has admitted that a binding agreement on climate change may not be reached at a summit later this year. Speaking at a weekly press conference, Mr Ban told reporters that the global community needs to be "practical and realistic" about the outcomes of the climate change meeting in Cancun, Mexico this winter. International delegates failed to reach a binding agreement at the Copenhagen climate change summit last December. More than 190 countries signed the Copenhagen Accord, which decreed that two degrees C would be the acceptable limit for global warming, however an agreement is needed for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Mr Ban said: "It may be the case that we may not be able to have that comprehensive binding agreement in Cancun." The comments come following a meeting of the UN climate change advisory group in Bonn where British economist Nicholas Stern said that no single source will be able to provide the $100 billion (£63 billion) a year needed to control climate change, which was agreed under the Copenhagen Accord.

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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately